The Government has been unsuccessful in deporting dozens of foreign criminals from Britain

Scores of people that the Government have wanted to remove from the country
have been able to stay by either claiming that they had a “family life” in
Britain under Article Eight of the European Convention of Human Rights, or
by insisting they faced torture or abuse if sent home.

Learco Chindamo, who murdered headmaster Philip Lawrence, won an appeal against deportation after his lawyers argued that sending him to Italy, where he was born, would breach his human rightsPhoto: PA

By Daily Telegraph reporter

8:00AM BST 08 Sep 2011

A total of 102 people defeated the Home Secretary in the courts in 2010 on family rights grounds, including violent criminals and illegal immigrants who had no other right to be in the country.

Nigerian Philip Olawale Omotunde took part in an elaborate scam which involved claiming £1 million in illegal benefits during 2004.

The Home Office tried to deport the Nigerian but he won the right to stay in Britain after arguing it would breach his "right to private and family life" to separate him from his six-year-old son - who was going to a school 12 miles away from where his father lived.

Extraordinarily he should not have been in the country in the first place.

Omotunde came to Britain as a visitor in 1991, when he was 28, and overstayed his visa. The Home Office made a decision to deport him in 1996 but no action was taken.

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Learco Chindamo, 31, who served a life sentence for killing headmaster Philip Lawrence outside his London school in 1995, won an appeal against deportation after his lawyers argued that sending him to Italy, where he was born, would breach his human rights.

Chindamo came to the UK when he was six. His father is Italian, his mother is from the Philippines and he has an Italian passport. He was 15 when he stabbed Mr Lawrence as the teacher defended a pupil outside St George's Roman Catholic comprehensive school in north London.

Earlier this year he was cleared of using his notoriety to intimate and rob a young man at a cash machine.